Tournament results, UFC, Gracie class 10/26, and open mat...

Tournament results: My "wing," Scott, got back from his gi round robin in San Antonio yesterday, having cleaned house AGAIN-- in fact all the guys from Phil's kicked butt, I think I heard Emmanuel landed a flying triangle, and once subbed a guy with 1 second left in the round... The only person Scott lost to was an instructor, a brown with 10 years' experience, and Scott took 3rd place in the takedown derby too. So woo-woo Relson people! :)

UFC: I feel so badly for Patrick Cote. No matter what you think of him as a fighter, it was not a good ending for the fight. I did think Silva's offer of a hand up (earlier, when Cote was on his back) was simultaneously cocky, deservedly so, and gentlemanly. Me, Mitch, Tariq, Scott, Bill and Zade went to Champions, a sports bar downtown, to watch, and we ended up discovering our waitress Kris used to train in boxing/MMA and will hopefully be coming to Phil's soon. She was very pretty, a tall slender blonde, and the table collectively deflated when she mentioned her husband. LOL.

In class, I worked on shrimping and getting my knees in, and keeping knee-elbow connection. Did some gi and later no-gi with Kirk... had one round with Richard... a little with Glenn... Kirk pointed out that my guillotine instinct does not serve me well and tried to redirect my muscle memory towards getting an underhook, which helped a lot. I also discovered that when trying to get a RNC, I was maneuvering my leg the wrong direction to catch the trapped arm. Also, Richard re-taught me the armbar from turtle: If you're turtled and they reach in, grabbing your forearm, punch your arm forwards. Assuming they maintain the grip, you have now extended their arm. With your other hand, trap behind their elbow- then hyperextend their elbow. This works whether they reach in on the same side as their base, or on the opposite side.

Then I went to a city-wide open mat, the first one, created by Darrin of Infinite Jiu Jitsu and Zade, my friend from Vandry. I was leery-- bunch of unknown guys, ego, etc. It was nothing scary. I did not roll with white belts, but did get to roll a bit with David Thomas from Austin Jiu Jitsu, who was an analytical and precise instructor, as well as Darrin (twice).

I learned two single-leg takedowns from Dave:
1. Shoot, knee to ground between their legs, scoop up knee, rotate hips to face same way they do, come to feet with their leg pinched between your own, collapse your inside shoulder against their femur and push straight down, trapping their leg under you to prevent re-establishing guard.
2. Shoot, knee to ground between their legs, put your ear to their bellybutton. Scoop their leg and put it in front of your hips; stand. Swing outside leg around and behind while pushing with head to the ground. Take side mount.

Dave also taught me a sneaky side control escape: instead of all the work involved in turning into them and getting a knee inside, lay on your side facing out. Basically you trap their top arm (coming over your body) in a figure-four, I think, come to your knees and roll them over you, ending in side mount or maybe knee in belly. I am writing him for detail on this one, since as always some detail has been lost in my fuddled brain. Like how come they don't take your back? I must be screwing something up.

Angry sweater: Dave's side control escape is found on his uber-useful BJJ techniques site and he describes it this way.